Mayo Clinic Researchers Study the Use of Medical Services Among Patients With Parkinson's Disease

Friday, September 27, 2002

ROCHESTER, Minn. — The following stories detail news from the current issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings. They are intended for use as individual stories or as part of a larger story on a particular medical topic.

A Mayo Clinic study identifies several factors in patients with Parkinson's disease, which predict medical services utilization and prognosis.

The study used patient records in the Rochester Epidemiology Project to identify 89 Parkinson's disease cases and 89 reference subjects without Parkinson's disease of the same age and sex, and from the same population.

The findings suggest that Parkinson's disease patients use outpatient and nursing-home services more often than subjects without Parkinson's disease. Patients with Parkinson's disease also experience a reduced survival time. Several demographic and clinical characteristics influenced utilization patterns and outcomes.

Parkinson's disease affects approximately seven in 1,000 people 40 years and older and three in 100 people 80 years and older. Researchers note that the population age 85 and older is projected to double from 1990 to 2020 and increase six-fold by 2050. This would imply a much greater number of people who will be at risk of Parkinson's disease.

Researchers found that predictors of nursing home placement and reduced survival in Parkinson's disease patients included a poor response to medication, lower education, older age at onset of Parkinson's disease and dementia.

Researchers who completed the study are Demetrius Maraganore, M.D., Peter O'Brien, Ph.D., and Walter Rocca, M.D., MPH, of Mayo Clinic, and Sotirios Parashos, M.D., who is now with the Minneapolis Clinic of Neurology and the Struthers Parkinson's Center in Minneapolis.

Mayo Clinic Proceedings is a peer-reviewed and indexed general internal medicine journal, published for more than 75 years by Mayo Foundation, with a circulation of 130,000 nationally and internationally.

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John Murphy
507-284-5005 (days)
507-284-2511 (evenings)
e-mail: newsbureau@mayo.edu

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